1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a solar cell module terminal box including a contact electrically connectable to an external terminal of a solar cell module, a connector member electrically connected to the contact, and a box main body, wherein the box main body has an accommodating portion for accommodating the contact, an attaching portion accommodating the connector member and a wall member which partitions the accommodating portion and the attaching portion from each other.
2. Description of the Related Art
With a solar cell module terminal box (referred to briefly as a “terminal box” hereinafter) described above, for the sake of water proofness and dust proofness at the connecting portion between the contact and the external terminal, it has been practiced conventionally to charge an amount of bonding material such as silicone resin to the accommodating portion of the contact and then allowing the material to solidified.
In order to connect the connector member to the contact, the connector member is inserted to a through hole formed in a wall member for example. In this case, there is a concern that unhardened bonding material charged to the contact accommodating portion may flow through a gap between the connector member and the through hole into the attaching portion of the connector member.
If unhardened bonding material enters the attaching portion of the connector member as above, this may adhere to a contact portion which is to come into electric contact with an external connector member electrically connected to e.g. an external connection cable, thus impairing the electric connection.
In order to avoid such situation as above, with the conventional terminal box, the connector member and the wall member are formed integral with each other by insert-molding the connector member in the wall member formed of resin, so as to avoid formation of such gap in the wall member which allows unwanted entrance of the bonding material to the attaching portion (see e.g. Japanese Patent No. 3769509).
In this case, there arises a need for e.g. a mold for the insertion molding, which may invite manufacture cost increase of the terminal box.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described state of the art and its object is to provide a terminal box which can readily realize restriction of manufacture cost and which can also effectively restrict entrance of unhardened bonding material into the attaching portion of the connector member.